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In February 2008, armed robbers stole four Impressionist works from the E.G. Bürle Foundation museum.
When three men walked into the E.G. Bürle Foundation museum in Zurich, Switzerland, the masterpieces didn't stand a chance. In broad daylight, one man pulled a gun while the other two grabbed the four paintings closest to the door and all on the same wall: Paul Cézanne's "Boy in the Red Waistcoat," Claude Monet's "Poppy Field at Vétheuil," Edgar Degas' "Ludovic Lepic and His Daughter" and Vincent van Gogh's "Blooming Chestnut Branches." It seems to be pure luck that they grabbed the most valuable piece in the museum's collection, the Cézanne [source: NYT] The thieves got out within minutes, leaving stunned museum patrons and staffers lying face-down on the floor.
The four paintings together are worth approximately $163 million, making it one of the biggest art thefts ever in Europe -- and Europe has seen its share of art theft [source: MSNBC]. Two weeks before the Bürle Foundation heist, two Picassos were stolen from another museum nearby. Thieves grabbed 20 paintings from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam in 1991 and a couple more in 2002. Stockholm's Modern Art Museum lost $60 million in paintings in 1993. The Louvre in Paris lost the "Mona Lisa" in 1911. And "The Scream" was taken from Oslo museums twice in 10 years, in 1994 and then again in 2004. Due to a combination of underfunded security and rising art prices, art theft has become more common in the last couple of decades.
The Bürle thieves didn't have much time to execute their heist, so they ran from the museum with the paintings still in their glass cases. Authorities believe the thieves ditched two of the works -- the Van Gogh and the Monet -- in an abandoned car in a nearby lot because they were just too heavy to carry.
The 2008 robbery proves what museums have been learning for the past couple of decades: Security doesn't mean much when thieves are willing to use force. Art heists are increasingly conducted at gunpoint -- a simple, brute means of physical violence that's not impressive or clever enough to make it into heist movies. The most impressive art heists are the ones in which the criminals rely on something more than physical threats.
In this article, we'll look at five of the most innovative art heists of the last hundred years. Number five on our list took place in Asuncion, Paraguay, and asks the age-old question: How many thieves does it take to dig a tunnel into a museum?
